Like
all the recent construction nearby, Strong Hospital’s new main entrance gives
symbolic weight to plans for Rochester’s economic future. There’s a symbolic
turnaround, too. Strong used to put its face more toward Crittenden Boulevard;
now it faces Elmwood Avenue. This is painfully evident at rush hour, when
Strong and the nearby University of Rochester River Campus — not to mention
businesses and services nearby — pour out traffic that clogs Elmwood and
other streets.
Highway planners are at work right
now to relieve the near-gridlock here by reconstructing some roads and links to
I-390 and I-590. (The area around Monroe Community College is in the mix, too.)
The planning approach is
controversial as well as classic in form. And it raises the usual question: Is
it possible to build our way out of a traffic problem, or does increased road
capacity merely invite more cars and trucks to fill up the new pavement?
Two miles east
of
Strong, an imminent highway project may answer this sort of question, one way
or the other.
The project concerns the narrower
end of Elmwood Avenue — specifically, the mile-long segment between Brighton’s
Twelve Corners and Clover Street (New York State Route 65). This segment, only
two lanes wide, runs through a leafy residential area. Here the roadway is
quite unlike the four-lane Elmwood that roars by the tall buildings of Strong
and the campus.
The slim end of Elmwood is no
country lane, however. It carries heavy traffic, particularly during morning
and evening rush hours.
Some commuters are headed to Clover
Street and adjacent neighborhoods; some are entering or exiting the numerous
side streets off Twelve Corners. But many drivers, frustrated by near-gridlock
along Monroe Avenue, etc., are exploiting a kind of short-cut. There’s an I-590
interchange on Elmwood a short distance from Clover, so it’s relatively easy to
take Elmwood for a short distance, get onto I-590, and then head north or
south.
It all adds up to too much traffic,
at least some of the time. And this is where the Monroe County Department of
Transportation comes in.
The department is now fine-tuning
plans to “improve” Elmwood between Hollywood Avenue (a short distance west of
Twelve Corners) and Clover Street. The plans entail widening the paved area and
upgrading the shoulders and infrastructure. Actual work, says Genesee
Transportation Council head Steve Gleason, “will be starting in earnest
sometime this year.” Planners have budgeted around $3.5 million for the
project, he says. According to GTC documents, the federal government will
contribute $2.8 million of that amount.
Gleason says the Monroe County DOT
has already “advanced” a project design. County DOT staff referred our
inquiries to county spokesperson Bob Nolan; the latter did not return a call
for comment. But Brighton officials point to the most significant features: The
design would add 6-foot-wide paved shoulders to the two existing 11-foot-wide
travel lanes. “The pavement will be widened,” says town highway and public
works superintendent Thomas Low. “But in terms of the area driven upon, it
won’t be a great deal wider.”
Right now, as town officials point
out, the shoulders along this stretch are rather “informal” — that is,
unpaved and not delineated. The informality, say the officials, leads some
homeowners to think the shoulders are part of their property. In any case,
they’re not unused. They accommodate bicyclists and pedestrians, after a
fashion. (There’s a sidewalk on only one side.)
A related problem: The shoulders
withstand heavy vehicles that leave the pavement while passing other vehicles
on the right. This happens frequently when motorists feel the need to get
around left-turning vehicles at minor intersections. The inevitable result is a
roadside that’s no pleasure for any user — and that may be a hazard for
everyone.
“The beaten-up
area will be recaptured,” says Thomas Low. He promises an end to “a perpetual
conflict” on the shoulder between motorists, residents, bicyclists, and
pedestrians. “This really isn’t a congestion project,” he says — though he
admits vehicles are often “stacked up” at rush hour.
In any case, asphalt will be
applied. Brighton town councilmember Ray Tierney notes that under the county
design, Elmwood would have a paved surface 34 feet wide. That means the plan
will have a large visual impact, even
if the width of the right-of-way overall is unchanged. And of course, more
asphalt may encourage faster driving.
These and other impacts may account
for what Low describes as “a great deal of neighborhood opposition.”
Enter the Elmwood Avenue
Neighborhood Committee, which aims to preserve the roadway’s residential
character.
The newly formed group is already in
private discussions with county planners, says co-chair Anna Sears. “It’s in a
holding pattern right now… sort of an impasse,” she says. She adds that members
are “reticent” about saying more, pending further discussions with planners.
Councilmember Tierney has many
thoughts on the project, though. “The county has a good process,” he says. And
he concedes that “the road is in horrible condition.”
But Tierney also criticizes the
county’s approach. “The neighbors,” he says, “are frustrated, and rightfully
so, [because] the county took a hard line.” How hard? Tierney says county
officials indicated they’d do it by the book — that is, using engineering
standards based on hard traffic-flow data, etc. — regardless of the roadway’s
individual, special ambience.
The data don’t justify a huge
overhaul, Tierney believes. As thing stand, he says, engineers have given the
roadway decent ratings — B’s and C’s on an A-D scale — for handling the
morning and evening traffic loads. “It’s not a bleak picture,” he says.
Brightonians, says Tierney, would be
willing to compromise on 4-foot rather than 6-foot paved shoulders, plus a
little more for a rebuilt sidewalk.
More important, he says, planners
need to deal with “synchronization” of traffic signals at Twelve Corners and
the I-590 interchange. He suspects that small adjustments would improve traffic
flow enough to make an extensive rebuild unnecessary.
Over the short and long
haul, attention to cross-town patterns may prove even more important.
“We’ve got a real problem in
Brighton with Westfall [Road] and Elmwood,” says Tierney. “They both go through
really residential areas… What’s happened is the economic engine of Strong and
the UR. Traffic is obviously going to be a problem.”
Elmwood Avenue would make a logical
light-rail line — an important spur to a central north-south line for which a
feasibility study has already been done. But there’s no “rapid transit” on
Elmwood’s horizon, says Tierney. “It’s going to get worse.”
Tierney is concerned about related
land-use issues, too. He describes Brighton’s efforts to manage growth on
former farmland between Westfall Road and the Erie Canal. The town, he says,
already controls around 100 acres of the 300 acres of open space there. The 100
acres will eventually become public parkland. But the remaining acreage, he
says, may be opened to development as — or if — Senator Keating Boulevard
is extended eastward toward South Winton Road.
Such development will come at a
private cost, however. According to new town guidelines, says Tierney,
developers who build along the boulevard will have to pay for any road
extension out of their own pockets.
That, he says, is what distinguishes
the as-yet-undeveloped parts of Brighton from built-up parts like the Elmwood
Avenue corridor. Historically, the public has been socked with the costs of
road construction that makes development possible (and profitable). And this in
turn has made it harder to put the brakes on unnecessary growth.
Tierney remarks that the spectacular
growth of some Monroe County suburbs — Brighton among them — seems to
contradict population trends. Indeed, US Census data show the county has grown
only slightly over the last generation, from 712,000 in 1970 to 735,000 in
2000.
There was a growth spurt here between 1960 and 1970, from 586,000 to
712,000. And not coincidentally, that decade was the Golden Age of the planning
style that still motivates the typical roadway “improvement” regime.
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 4, 2003.
